CRAB LINGUINE RECIPE
SERVES 4
Recipe time: 20 minutes
- First, pound together a fat garlic clove with some sea salt until you have a paste.
- Then, mix together with 500g crab meat (brown and white).
- Add one finely chopped red chilli (deseeded, unless you like the heat).
- Next, add a handful of chopped parsley.
- Then, the juice of two lemons and 100ml of the very best extra-virgin olive oil so you get a sloppy mixture.
- Cook 400g linguine in well-salted water (or sea water), al dente. Drain thoroughly and toss with the crab mixture.
- Finally, Divide between plates, dribble over a little olive oil and scatter with more parsley and sea salt.
THE INGREDIENT: CRAB
BY CHEF AND FOOD WRITER, JO WEINBERG
It’s not often you really want to eat something that you wouldn’t like to meet down a dubious alley on a dark night. But the crab’s ancient ugliness deserves respect. They are survivors: bottom feeders, adapting over millions of years to almost any kind of wet or semi-wet environment – sea, freshwater, semi-terrestrial, terrestrial. They are the gladiators of the water, their claws’ grip 10 times stronger than our own. There are more than 4,500 known species of crab, varying in size from a few millimetres wide (the pea crab) to giant creatures with a leg span of around 13ft, such as the Japanese Spider Crab. And wherever they are, they will be eaten – from the celebrated stone crabs of Florida to Singapore’s famous chilli crab, the sweet flesh to be sucked from a soupy bowl of fiery, sweet, deeply umami sauce. Those of us too lazy for the undertaking can confront the soft-shell crab: not a species itself but a crab that has moulted its exoskeleton to grow. It’s found in Japan – briefly deep-fried and usually served as sushi or with a garlicky mayonnaise – or indeed in Italy, where it is a speciality of the Venetian Lagoon.
There are several good reasons to eat crab. It’s as close as seafood gets to being guilt free, sustainably caught in our waters, with almost no by-catch. It’s also very reasonably priced. And most importantly, it is tasty – I have always thought more so (and harder to spoil) than its expensive seabed fellow, lobster. Once you have your crab, the humane method to kill it is to put it in the freezer for a short while to numb it, then drive a skewer first through the point at the tip of the flap underneath the body and, immediately afterwards, between the eyes. Either piercing should be lethal, so to do both is a belt-and-braces undertaking. After that, it should be boiled in well-salted water (use sea salt or, better still, seawater) for 10 to 20 minutes depending on size (an occasional specimen of four pounds-plus might call for 25 minutes). Picking crabs is relatively easy; your patience and application will determine the level of reward you extract from it. The only thing you can’t eat, apart from the shell, are the dead man’s fingers, the grey gills that reveal themselves as you tear the carapace from the body.
The snobbery around white and brown meat is misplaced – each has its role. The brown gives a rich, earthy note (beat with butter and lemon juice and spread on toast), the white a sweet elegance. This crab linguine recipe is my favourite way to show off both.
THE BEST WINE TO PAIR WITH CRAB LINGUINE
BY MALCOLM GLUCK
For so luxurious a dish it is entirely fitting that, as the crab mixture comes together and the linguine await cooking, our chef avails herself of Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill 2004. This perfect Champagne is incomparably balanced – buttery without being fat, mature without a hint of arthritis, complex without being pious. It is one of the region’s most emphatically elegant wines (£150 a bottle at Waitrose). Naturally, with a chef so blessed one expects the guests to be similarly spoilt.
The main event presents a small dilemma: white wine or rosé? I unequivocally come down on the white side here, but there is one irresistible rosé worth considering: Whispering Angel 2017 from Château d’Esclans in Provence, chic beyond belief with a wild-raspberry richness tempered by a crisp acidity (£23.99 a bottle at Majestic). But unless you are unusually keen on pink wines, then a white Burgundy will serve you better here. One splendid example is Corton-Charlemagne 2006 from Domaine Patrick Javillier. This being the age it is, is serious yet with a freshness and agility surprising for one so advanced in years. It could be said to be almost too powerful a partner for so subtle a dish, but I think the wine is saved by the minerality at the heart of it. It is a wonderful, crab-compatible Chardonnay (£480 a six-case at Berry Bros & Rudd). But is it more wonderful than a Viognier from Condrieu in the northern Rhône? It’s moot.
Personally – and how else can a wine critic speak? – I lean towards the Viognier here, and so let me point you in the direction of Georges Vernay and his heart-stoppingly delicious Condrieu called Coteau de Vernon in the 2015 vintage. Its merchant,Yapp Brothers, recommends one drinks it ‘reverently’, which makes it sound like holy water, but the Brothers also suggest the wine should be decanted. Absolutely! Pour it into a jug and put it in the fridge for five or six hours, and let all the stone-fruit richness meld into the acids so that hints of toasted sesame and almond appear. Could anything be more glorious with that crab linguine recipe? In my opinion, nothing. It’s £89 a bottle and £185 for the magnum (2016 vintage). I don’t suppose this dish or that wine are necessarily mid-week supper partners, but for a mob of weekend-dinner guests that Coteau de Vernon, in the magnum, with huge bowls of the linguine will, I promise you, be a meal that will be talked about for years. Decades. Perhaps centuries. So. If you fancy immortality, that’s your wine.
Here's how to make the best pancakes in the world, by Wolfgang Puck
How to cook scrambled eggs around the world
